Breathe Into Me
by Tris'sLightningQuill
Summary: A different sort of songfic; sort of a music video in words. Focuses mainly on Brekke and F'nor's story and relationship throughout Dragonquest. Touches on Brekke and Canth's connection as well. R&R, pretty please!


I claim ownership of nothing below, except for the arrangement! The words are the brilliant Anne McCaffrey's, the lyrics belong to Red. It's a cool song, check it out if you don't know it! "Breathe Into Me" by the group Red, from the album _End of Silence._

This format is a little strange, I'll admit, but still cool in its weird, singular way, I think. It's generally chronological, though there are exceptions...the organization is more _feel_ and _idea_ orientated, I suppose. Please, let me know what you think of it!...

Without further ado:

* * *

**And this how it feels when I ignore the words you spoke to me**

"_You ought to remember Brekke, F'nor," Lessa said, eyebrows raised at his lapse. The girl looked startled but managed a hesitant smile, then looked pointedly towards Manora, trying to turn attention away from herself. — There was, however, a sweetness about Brekke's solemn face._

_She gave him a little smile. "A weyr is were a dragon is, no matter how it's constructed."_

"_Why Brekke, I didn't know you cared," F'nor said, rather pleased at her vehement reaction. She gave him such a piercingly candid look that his smile faded. As if she regretted that all too intimate glance, she gave him a half-playful push toward the door._

You never asked, _Canth replied. _I like Brekke.

_He knew the answer before she spoke, knew it when she placed her finger on his lips to silence him. But he couldn't understand her sorrow. He'd been a fool, but…_

_Because Kylara moved on, Canth did not tell his rider._

**And this where I lose myself when I keep running away from you**

_She slipped by him, out the door, and was across the clearing before he realized that _he_ hadn't heard Canth. "Brekke?" She turned hesitantly, at the edge of the woods. "Can you hear other dragons?"—"Yes." She whirled and was gone._

_F'nor frowned slightly at Brekke, subtly changed in her dragon's presence._

"_Don't rob me of what contentment I can contrive."_

"_I have loved you since the first day I saw you. You were so kind to us, yanked away from Craft and Hold, dazed… …And you—you were everything a dragonman should be, tall and handsome, so kind. I didn't know then—" and Brekke faltered. To F'nor's concern, tears filmed her eyes. "How _could _I know that only bronzes fly queens!"_

I could not find her _between_.

**And this is who I am when I don't know myself anymore**

_"All because of Kylara…" "Mirrim!"_

"_Is Wirenth ready to rise?" F'nor asked his brown, stopping dead in his tracks. _Soon. Soon. Bronzes will know. — _Brekke looked so young, much too young…_

"_Don't keep foisting your friends on me." Her voice was sharp. "I like Southern. I'm needed here." "Needed? You're being shamelessly exploited!"—She stared at him, as surprised by the impulsive outburst as he was. For one moment he thought he understood why, but her eyes became guarded and F'nor wondered what Brekke could want to hide._

"_Useful, worthwhile, wholesome, capable, dependable, the list is categoric, F'nor, I know the entire litany," Brekke said with a funny little catch in her voice. "Rest assured, my friend, I know what I am." _

_F'nor held the weeping girl to his chest, his lips against her soft hair, her trembling hands folded in his. Yes, there was much about Brekke he could understand now._

**And this is what I choose when it's all left up to me**

"_No! No!" The denial was so soft he barely heard it. "Not—Benden."_

Pridith will not hear me. _Mnementh said suddenly._ She will not hear Orth. She is unhappy.

_"She'll want to die. Don't let her!"_

"_The Lord didn't want to be disturbed. Well, I disturbed him, all right. I stopped him doing what he was doing. And that's what was doing it! Setting Pridith off…. You _don't_ abuse your dragon that way."_

_Lessa gave an impatient snort. "Brekke says nothing. She will not even open her eyes."_

**Breathe your life into me**

_There was such a bitterness in her light words, and such a shadow in her usually candid green eyes that F'nor could not tolerate it. To erase that self-deprecation, to make amends for his own maladroitness, F'nor leaned across the table to kiss her on the lips._

**I can feel you**

_He meant it as no more than a guerdon and was totally unprepared for the reaction in himself, in Brekke. Or for Canth's distant bugle._

**I'm falling, falling faster**

_Those men, conditioned to Kylara's exotic tastes, would brutalize this inexperienced child._

_"Help me!" Brekke pleaded. Pilgra embraced her with an odd smile. "Don't be scared. It's wonderful."_

**Breathe your life into me  
****I still need you**

This is wrong! All wrong! Evil,_ she moaned, crying with all her spirit for F'nor. He had said he'd come. He had promised that only Canth would fly Wirenth. _Canth! **Canth!**

**I'm falling, falling**

_Screaming in protest, Wirenth dove at the intruder, her talons extended, her body no longer exulting in flight but tensed for combat._

_Wirenth's tortured scream pierced the heavens just as other queens broke into the air around them._

**Breathe into me**

_Above her—Canth! Canth? _—_ Suddenly teeth closed on Wirenth's neck, close to the major artery at the junction of the shoulder. Wirenth's mortal scream was cut off as she struggled for breath itself. Wounded by foe, hampered by friend, Wirenth desperately transferred _between_, taking Pridith with her, jaws deathlocked on her life's blood. _

**Breathe into me**

"_How dare she? I'll kill her!" Brekke was shrieking in a voice that was shrill with lust as well as with fury. _—_ "My eye! My eye! My eye!" Brekke was covering her right eye, her body writhing in an uncontrollable, unconscious mimicry of the aerial battle to which she was tuned._

_One rider began to scream and the sound broke the link of the two others who stared, dazed, at Brekke's contorting body. _—_ Then she seemed to spring, her left eye widening in unholy joy, her lips bared as her teeth fastened on an imaginary target, her body arching with the empathetic effort._

"_Don't touch her!"_

**BREATHE**

**And this is how it looks when I am standing on the edge**

_The man had eyes only for the girl entering from the Ground level. Two figures, a man and a woman, stood by the wide opening, as if they could accompany her this far and no further. She stumbled slightly, halted, seeming impervious to the uncomfortably hot sands. She straightened her shoulders and walked across to join the five girls who waited near the golden egg._

**And this is how I break apart when I finally hit the ground**

_She seemed limp, broken, pathetic, listing to one side. A dragon crooned softly and she shook her head as if only then aware of her surroundings. — The queen's head to turned to Brekke, the glistening eyes enormous in the outsized skull. The queen lurched forward a step._

_With defiant screams, a fire lizard hung just above the queen's head. — "Berd! Don't!" Brekke moved forward, arm outstretched, to capture the irate bronze. Brekke turned, no longer a statue immobilized by grief, and retraced her steps to the figures waiting at the entrance._

**And this is how it hurts when I pretend I don't feel any pain**

_It had been like coming up out of the very bowls of the deepest hold, thought Brekke. And Berd had shown her the way. She shuddered again at the horror of that memory. If she slipped back down…_

"_You need cozening, love," she said in a low voice which cracked and didn't seem to be hers at all._

"_She's got to cry, F'nor. It'll be an easing for her."_

_Then she felt anger in her guts. "But how could you force me onto the Hatching Ground, to face another queen?"_

**And this is how I disappear when I throw myself away**

"_It was in my mind," Brekke admitted in a tremulous voice, burrowing against his chest, as if she must get even closer to him. "I was trapped in my mind and didn't own my body…. Oh, F'nor," and all the grief she could not express before came busting out of her, "I even hated Canth!"_

_She locked her fingers in his and smiled gently, a smile that did not disperse her sorrow."I _was_ craftbred," she corrected herself. "I'm weyrfolk now." Berd crooned approvingly and Grall added a trill of her own._

**Breathe your life into me  
****I can feel you**

"_I felt you there, both of you, even when I wanted most to die."_

**I'm falling, falling faster**

_The empty ache she tried not to remember threatened to become a hole down which she must go if only to end this burning, tearing pain of loss._

**Breathe your life into me**

_She was startled by the unhealthy green tinge to his color._

**I still need you**

I am here, _said Canth as F'nor's arms folded hard around her._

**I'm falling, falling**

_"Never leave me alone!"_

**Breathe into me**

_"Brekke!" The terror, the yearning, the desperation in F'nor's cry were louder than the inner roaring and pushed it back, dispersed its threat._

**Breathe into me**

_Two warm fire lizard bodies pressed urgently against her neck and face, affection and worry so palpable in their thoughts it was like a physical touch._

**Breathe into me**

_Brekke stared at the young girl, watching in a sort of bemusement while Mirrim deftly pushed F'nor out of her way..._

**Breathe into me**

**_Oh—!_**

**Breathe your life into me**

_F'nor laughed with an assurance he didn't honestly feel._

**I can feel you**

"_Lessa is afraid that F'lar may attempt to go to the Red Star himself," Brekke said, watching him._

**I'm falling, falling faster**

"_I understand, Lessa," Brekke said very slowly, her eyes unwinking as she held Lessa's. "Yes, I understand you."_

_Disturbed, he turned to Brekke, surprised to see tears in the girl's eyes._

**Breathe your life into me**

_She clung to him, kissing him so urgently that he forgot Lessa's disturbing idea, forgot he was hungry and tired, and responded with eager surprise to her ardent demands._

**I still need you**

"_Tell Brekke." And he suddenly realized that Brekke already knew, had known when she seduced him so unexpectedly._

**I'm falling, falling**

_He felt nothing, not the soft hide of the dragon against his cheek, nor the straps scoring his flesh. Only the cold. Black _between_ had never existed so long...they burst out of _between_ into a heat that was suffocating. —A thousand hot points burned the unprotected skin of F'nor's face, pitted Canth's hide, penetrating each lid over the dragon's eyes. The overwhelming, multileveled sound of the cyclonic atmosphere bettered their minds ruthlessly to unconsciousness._

**Breathe into me**

_Grall returned to Brekke, crying piteously, burrowing into Brekke's arm._

**Breathe your life into me**

_Canth wouldn't go if he felt it would endanger F'nor. Canth had sense, Brekke told herself. He knows what he can and can't do. Canth is the biggest, fastest, strongest brown dragon on Pern._

**I'm falling, falling faster**

_Brekke heard Ramoth brassy bugle of alarm just as she received the incredible message from Canth._

**Breathe your life into me  
****Falling, falling, falling**

_Brekke futilely clapped her hands to her ears, searching the confusion for a sight of Lessa or F'lar._

"_Canth and F'nor are on their way to the Red Star."_

_At that instant, every noise ceased in the weyr as every mind felt the impact if the warning the fire lizards had been trying incoherently to project._

**Breathe into me**

_Turbulence, savage, ruthless, destructive; a pressure inexorable and deadly. Churning masses of slick, sickly grey surfaces that heaved and then dipped. Heat as massive as a tidal wave. Fear! Terror! An inarticulate longing!_

**Breathe into me**

_A scream torn from a single throat, a scream like a knife upon raw nerves! —_"Don't leave me alone!"

**Breathe into me**

_Brekke could not see. Her eyes were filled with blood from vessels burst by he force of her cry. But she knew there was a speck in the sky, tumbling downward with a speed that increased with every length; a plunge as fatal as the one Canth had tried to stop over the stony heights of the High Reaches range._

**Breathe into me**

**BREATHE**

"_He's not breathing," someone cried. "His lips are blue!"_

_Some half-forgotten memory prompted Brekke to wrench F'nor's jaws apart. She covered his mouth with hers and exhaled deeply into his throat. She blew air into his lungs and sucked it out again._

"Canth! Stay!" —_The dragon's pain was like a cruel know in her mind._

_She breathed in and out. Out and in. For F'nor, for herself, for Canth._

* * *


End file.
